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It is no secret that I voted to remain in the EU. All 3 generations of my family, who were eligible to vote, also voted to remain (and my kids would have voted the same way, had they had the chance – under no parental pressure, you understand!). And yet, as my long departed Nanna would say (the one, who knew all the names of her grandchildren after her stroke, except mine, and called me, Edith!)…. “Well, here we are….”

Here we are indeed. I am disappointed and sad, but here we are. We have some deeply painful and complicated times ahead of us, but for those of us who voted to remain, what we must not do is retreat into a finger pointing woundedness that is willing to embrace the ‘other’ in Europe, but the reject the ‘other’ in the UK, who felt that Brexit was the way to go. No. In a world where we long for a positive approach to peace, for reconciliation under-girded by our first value to love one another, we must hold ourselves to account and dig deep to remember who we are and what kind of future we want to build together.

There are some really really important conversations for us to have right across the UK that will help us to face up to and heal the wounds we have exposed. Both sides of the debate over the EU have some significant hurts and many of them go deeper than a simple in/out referendum could ever address.

So, how do we engage together and have conversations with people from different sides of the dividing line about what kind of UK we might see develop? What might we reimagine together? Is there a hope of a Union left? Here are some things that I would like to explore in some upcoming blogs and see what conversations emerge:

Ontology – what?! Yep – in the end, so much of who we are and how we live, what we align ourselves with and how we would choose to shape our future together depends on this. Basically – why are we here? What is our purpose? We need to understand this at an individual and a corporate level. As I have suggested in my other blog (www.reimagininghealth.com) our health and wellbeing actually depends on having a life that aligns with this sense of knowing why we are.

Theology and Philosophy – what?! Yes – again, so much of our life in this nation and certainly our politics is under-girded by things people have/have not believed about God and his/her interaction with the world. Whether you are a person of faith or not, it is difficult to deny that for good or ill, the geopolitical worldview of the West has been hugely shaped by the partnership of church and empire over the preceding several centuries. This area of thought and study especially shapes our understanding of ‘Sovereignty’.

Economics – this is more obvious. How we choose to “order our house” has huge implications of how we then live in the world. David Cameron tells us there is ‘no alternative’ to the Neoliberal economic agenda with its reliance on the ‘benevolent’ free market, competition, privatisation, biopower and austerity. And whether the UK or the EU is the worst proponent of this, I’m not sure, but perhaps other options are available to us. Maybe we don’t need to have an ever widening gap between the rich and poor. Maybe we don’t have to have a London-Centric (or even with the emergence of a Northern Powerhouse, a Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Centric) economy. Does our economy always have to grow? If it does – what does this mean for the creation of a peaceful world or our ecosystems? Isn’t it high time we had a good hard look at what our policies are doing to the world we live in, or demand in terms of war and self-protectionism? I recently trained as an executive coach – I can tell you for sure, there are always options…..it is a lie to say that we have no alternative. We do. We can have a fairer society and perhaps it’s time for us to say to the corporate giants who threaten us that they will up and leave if we don’t give them enormous tax breaks and turn a blind eye to their greed, that we will find a kinder way of being without them. There are options open to us of renationalisation of some things, co-operatives, credit unions, gift economies, time banking and many other things explored by top economists, which the press give no voice to.

And then we have more surface issues. What about our relationship with Europe and the rest of the world now? Surely we aren’t going to believe we have some kind of Empire-like influence in the world anymore? The British Empire and Christendom are both over! So, now that we don’t have them and we’re not part of the EU – what kind of partnerships do we want with other nations?

And what about education? Is it OK that there was such a massive split in how people voted according to what they had achieved at an academic level? Are we developing academic snobbery? Are we developing education systems where there is an understanding of important issues like the one we’ve just had a referendum about? If it wasn’t for our dinner time conversations, my kids would know nothing about the EU – but thanks to Michael Gove, they can tell me about subordinate clauses and modal verbs! There is something very wrong with that.

For healthcare – we already know that the Brexit campaign told us a complete lie about how much extra funding would be available to the NHS. But here we are! Given our current economic policies, it is difficult to see how our Nation’s favourite brand will survive. You cannot believe in an ever shrinking state and increased privatisation and continue to have the best and fairest healthcare system in the world! This is why we need greater participatory leadership and truer representative democracy!

Ecology, peace-making and so much more need to be the discussions around our kitchen tables, on our walks and in our cafes and pubs. Enough of the hypnosis by our media! Let’s find each other again, heal our hurts, listen, seek to understand and together find solutions for how we are going to live in this world. Here is to a future of love, hope and peace. I will explore some more of this in the coming blogs.

I recently participated in an extremely enjoyable conversation about ‘The Parable of the Good Samaritan’ and how we read it/it reads us today. (Read or watch below).

Luke 10:25-37 English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.”28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.35 And the next day he took out two denarii[a] and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?”37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Footnotes:

It’s a parable so well-known now, it is easy to let its impact completely wash over us. For me, it and the preceding dialogue poses 3 hugely political issues (by that I
mean how we live alongside our fellow humans) rather than party politics, which I consider to be an utterly defunct system which will not deliver to us the future we are calling for. (Having said that I recognise some people feel called to change it from within, and I am particularly excited to soon embark on the wonderful Caroline Lucas’ new book, ‘Honourable Friends?’)…….

The 3 issues are as follows:

1) With whom does your allegiance lie? Jesus’ challenge is straight – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength i.e. are you about loving God and walking in the ways of love or are you about serving Caesar or religion or an oppressive regime or a particular leader or a nation-state or flag?

2) Who is my neighbour? Who is there around me that I could be helping, but am not? Who am I too busy or too important to help, to stoop down to, to embrace? Who might inconvenience my schedule or delay my journey? Who might infect me or make me feel ‘dirty’? Who am I struggling to spend myself on behalf of? And yet, who is the unexpected person doing that for me?

3) Who is the ‘other’ that offends me? I was watching one of my favourite TV shows the other week – gogglebox – absolute genius television! One of the reasons I love it is that it gives me hope that TV, rather than simply nullify our pain, numb us to the real issues, pacify and hypnotize us to carry on business as usual, can actually inspire some conversation, cause to engage with the ‘other’ and maybe even challenge and change our perspectives! One of the shows the goggleboxers were watching, was one about a man I have in all honesty had quite a low opinion of – Nigel Farage. It was a show about him as a person, rather than his (odorous) policies. It challenged me deeply. Nearly all of the people watching him, started out with quite a low opinion of him, but came out the other side seeing him much more as a human being. It is so easy to dehumanize the ‘other’, to ridicule those we don’t agree with and create the great ‘us and them’ divide. But the challenge of Jesus is so stark in this parable. Who is the one you despise? See, they are a human being like you, and maybe not so awful as you might think. (Not an excuse to not debate awful ideas btw!).

I wonder, as we look to the future across Europe, how helpful the vilification of individuals and people groups is? Will it give us a new, love based politics? When we really allow ourselves to imagine the future, I mean really imagine it, does it involve more separation and division?

I wonder, if Jesus told this parable in the UK today who he would cast as the ‘Good Samaritan’? Maybe a male taxi driver of Pakistani origin from Rochdale? Or a school girl from London who has some sympathies for some of the ideas of IS? Perhaps a member of the EDL? PLEASE don’t mishear me. I am not for one minute suggesting that those who did the despicable acts in Rochdale, or those carrying out heinous and barbaric crimes in the middle east, be that IS (or the nation-states bombing the middle east) are “good samaritans”. But if we are not careful it is possible we tar too many people with the same brush. Interestingly, we wouldn’t have an NHS without the 11% of all our staff and 26% of the doctors who come from overseas. Maybe we (who is the ‘we’ – the UK? Europe? Humanity?) are richer together and if we allow ourselves to discover interdependence, we will find some love from very unexpected places and find ourselves embracing those we once thought “beyond the pale” (originally a phrase meaning those in Ireland who lived outside the British boundaries…..)?